TY - JOUR AU - McClain, Lauren PY - 2017/08/03 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - Exploring Gender, Relationships, Parenthood, and Poverty in the Inner City Utilizing the Work of Kathryn Edin JF - TRAILS: Teaching Resources and Innovations Library for Sociology JA - TRAILS VL - IS - SE - DO - UR - https://trails.asanet.org/article/view/exploring-gender-relationships-parenthood-and SP - AB - Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood before Marriage and Doing the Best I Can: Fatherhood in the Inner City, by Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas and Timothy J. Nelson, respectively, are excellent portrayals of young women’s and men’s lives. These texts explore issues of courtship, sexual and romantic relationships, contraceptive use (or lack thereof), poverty, parenthood, marriage, violence, alcohol/drug use, education, and the labor market. Particularly for students whose own life experience has been more privileged, these books can be profoundly eye-opening. This article will outline the way that I have used these books in my class to discuss issues of gender, family, parenthood, and more in the context of urban poverty. Half of the class reads one book and the other half reads the other book. They consult with those who read the same book for a few class periods, then decide on questions they have for the other group, finally, the two groups interview each other. More details are provided below. ER -